Musings

Finding Family

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Today’s prompt is to write a poem about family. I am blessed in family. I do not know how I would have managed the past eight months without my family: my family of birth, my cozy little family of four, my chosen circles of friendfamily. Those feelings have been riding so intense in me for so many months now, that I don’t know how to distill it into the language of poetry. Perhaps because it is so deep right now, I fear that I could only write shallowly about it. And so, instead, I chose to create a found poem about family, to make it a game, an intellectual exercise.

I chose five quotations about family, printed them out and physically cut them up, which was a different experience in my brain than cutting and pasting on the computer, then arranged them into a poem. Here are the quotations:

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“I sustain myself with the love of family.”
― Maya Angelou

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
― Frederick Buechner

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
—Mary Oliver

“My mother used to tell me that when push comes to shove, you always know who to turn to. That being a family isn’t a social construct but an instinct.”
― Jodi Picoult

And here is the poem:

I.
the family skeleton
used to tell me:
over and over
you can kiss your mind goodbye
your stomach isn’t a social construct
but at the same time
if you cannot get rid of time
make it dance
and put miles between you but because you do not
you may as well
just live in a world
announcing your place
with the love of family the world offers itself
and instinct
harsh and exciting

II.
my mother
calls to you:
a world lives in you
like the wild geese
your family and friends that you carry them
being a family
to your imagination
no matter how lonely I sustain myself
in the family of things
with you in your heart but that when push
comes to shove
whoever you are
you always know
who to turn to

Gratitude List:
1. Re-membering, recalibrating, renewing, re-viewing, rewilding
2. Finding poetry
3. Making things
4. How the prayers shift and transform themselves–and me
5. The fox who paused this morning underneath the treehouse, to sniff the wind and feel the first rays of morning sun.
May we walk in Beauty!

“The winds will blow their own freshness into you,
and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop away from you
like the leaves of Autumn.”
—John Muir

“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls. ” —Ursula Le Guin

“The mother tongue is language not as mere communication but as relation, relationship. It connects. It goes two ways, many ways, an exchange, a network. Its power is not in dividing but in binding, not in distancing but in uniting.

It is written, but not by scribes and secretaries for posterity: it flies from the mouth on the breath that is our life and is gone, like the outbreath, utterly gone and yet returning, repeated, the breath the same again always, everywhere, and we all know it by heart.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

“Who would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?” —Jessica Valenti

“The heart is right to cry
even when the smallest drop of light, of love, is taken away
Perhaps you may kick, moan, scream—in a dignified silence,
but you are right to do so in any fashion…until God returns to you.”
―Hafiz (Ladinsky)

“All water is holy water.”
―Rajiv Joseph

“The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.”
―Arundhati Roy

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.
Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”
―Scott Adams

“You know what breaks me, when someone is visibly excited about a feeling or an idea or a hope or a risk taken, and they tell you about it but preface it with: “Sorry, this is dumb but—.” Don’t do that. I don’t know who came here before me, or who conditioned you to think you had to apologize or feel obtuse. But not here. Dream so big it’s silly. Laugh so hard it’s obnoxious. Love so much it’s impossible. And don’t you ever feel unintelligent. And don’t you ever apologize. And don’t you ever shrink so you can squeeze yourself into small places and small minds. Grow. It’s a big world. You fit. I promise.”
―Owen Lindley

“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than our fears and prejudices.” ―Jimmy Carter

“The reality is we have more in common with the people we’re bombing than the people we’re bombing them for.” ―Russell Brand

“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ”
―Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire

Panels

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Brewer’s Prompt today is to write a panel poem. I don’t think he was thinking about the panels of comics and graphic stories, but I can’t get that out of my head. One of my colleagues is really articulate about the role of graphic novels in developing literacy, especially for reluctant readers and readers with learning challenges. I was reading one of the graphic novels in our library the other day, about creating your own comics, and the author wrote about the way an artist must design the panels on the page so that the reader’s eye flows across the page, from left to right, and top to bottom, making the direction of the story obvious in the flow of the page. This, too, is a basic literacy concept, that we read left to right and top to bottom as we decode the story.

I’ve written today’s poem as an ekphrastic poem based on the six panels of a piece of AI generated artwork, trying to create a sense of story in the seemingly random images.

1.
Cloud-dragons scatter,
fleeing the pursuing wind
in the sky of memory,
and scarlet-tipped grasses
bow their heads in the chill morning.
The story beckons. Go!

2.
On the rim of a canyon,
a massive boulder, exquisitely balanced
stands witness to centuries
of changelessness and change.
You are the canyon, the wind,
and the sentinel stone.

3.
In the valley ahead,
the storm clouds are lifting.
Mist rises above the lake
as dusk falls, and you
have many miles to go
before you can rest.

4.
Do you fear to enter
the woods at dusk,
or do you long
for that adventure?

5.
When you have crossed the sea,
you will meet an old woman
between two trees on a low hill.
She will ask you three questions,
and you must answer truthfully.

6.
Listen to me, bright spirit!
The journey you make will not be
the journey you embarked upon.
But it will be the one you need.

Gratitude List:
1. Maple cookies
2. Vanilla moonshine
3. The moon in all her phases
4. Story-weaving
5. How the journey you make becomes the one you need.
May we walk in Beauty!

“Expressing our vulnerability can help resolve conflicts.” —Marshall B. Rosenberg

“Our original instructions are to listen to the cloud floating by and the wind blowing by. That’s poetry and prose in English, but it is wakahan in the Lakotan language. It means to consciously apply mystery to everything. Everything is alive and has its own consciousness.” —Lakota elder Tiokasin Ghosthorse

James Baldwin: “To be sensual is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” —Samwise Gamgee

“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that you play that determines if it’s good or bad.” —Miles Davis

“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” —Frida Kahlo

A little story by Amrita Nadi:
At the end of a talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, “Why didn’t you fight back against the Chinese?”
The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, “Well, war is obsolete, you know.”
Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he added, “Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back. . .but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.”

“There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.” —Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

“Always there is something worth saying
about glory, about gratitude.”
—Mary Oliver, What Do We Know

Do your little bit of good where you are;
its those little bits of good put together,
that overwhelm the world.
—Desmond Tutu

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” —Jeannette Rankin

When we see the Beloved in each person,
it’s like walking through a garden,
watching flowers bloom all around us. —Ram Dass

“You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles. You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs. You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude. And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.
I’m not pandering to your egotism by telling you these things. When I say, “Be yourself,” I don’t mean you should be the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on top of a Mt. Everest-sized pile of pretty garbage.
When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the self that says “Thank you!” to the wild irises and the windy rain and the people who grow your food. I mean the rebel creator who’s longing to make the whole universe your home and sanctuary. I mean the dissident bodhisattva who’s joyfully struggling to germinate the seeds of divine love that are packed inside every moment.
When I say, “Be yourself,” I mean the spiritual freedom fighter who’s scrambling and finagling and conspiring to relieve your fellow messiahs from their suffering and shower them with rowdy blessings.” —Rob Brezsny

“The root of joy is gratefulness…It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” ―Brother David Steindl-Rast

Our Lady of the Road

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

Robert Lee Brewer (at Writers Digest) likes to offer fill in the blank poem title prompts. I like to try them. Today’s was to write a poem titled _______ of the ________. I’ve been working lately on re-writing some of the traditional prayers of the rosary to suit my own particular mytho-poetic-spiritual vision. I’ve also been memorizing some old and new poem/prayers. So today’s poem is a prayer of my own:

Our Lady of the Road

Oh gracious Lady of the road,
beckon me, and draw me forth upon the way.
Keep me from walking in the complacent paths
that lead to destruction,
but set my feet upon the road that will teach me,
upon the Damascus Road, upon the Emmaus Road,
where I will hear the voice of warning,
where I will hear the voice of wisdom,
where my eyes will be blinded,
where my eyes will be opened.
Place me in roads that will turn me from evil.
Send me guides and guardians to block my path
when I have lost my way, and lead me
in all of the holy directions
that I may come into your presence
with joy.
With joy.

Gratitude List:
1. On the way to school this morning, I noticed, among the hard frost all around, glorious rose and late roses blooming
2. Gen Z. I think they helped us to avert disaster
3. The folx who stand in the gap
4. Prayers. Poems. Prayers.
5. Coaches. Tonight was the XCountry banquet at EYSD. I’m so grateful for the coaches who train and encourage the kids.
May we walk in Beauty!

“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” —Carl Sagan

“But this moment, you’re alive. So you can just dial up the magic of that at any time.” —Joanna Macy

“I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” —Vincent van Gogh

“The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.” —Emma Goldman

“Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal.” —Sark

“Everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything exists, only because I love.” —Leo Tolstoy

“Love is a great beautifier.” —Louisa May Alcott

“Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.” —Erica Jong

“Fall in love over and over again every day. Love your family, your neighbors, your enemies, and yourself. And don’t stop with humans. Love animals, plants, stones, even galaxies.” —Frederic and Mary Ann Brussa

Take a Breath

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

On November Tuesdays on the Poetry page of Writers Digest, Editor Robert Lee Brewer offers dual prompts. He always suggests that you can choose to one or the other or both. I am an Enneagram Seven, and so I am always tempted to do both. Today’s prompt is to write a form poem and/or an anti-form poem.

I have spent entirely too much fluttery energy today trying to create a form poem. I wanted to do a prosey run-on stanza without line breaks, and then suddenly shift into a Rondolet, and back to a prose stanza, but my Rondolets all come out sounding hackneyed and stilted, and my brain is beginning to turn fuzzy, and I still haven’t gotten my lesson plans finished for tomorrow. (You can see how that whole free-association, running sentence thing began to influence my writing.) Plus, I have been feeling tremendous pressure today to create a poem that somehow speaks truth to power on Election Day. In desperation, I just began to type, and tried to settle on something that had a little more form than simply free verse, but that gave me room to breathe a bit.

I am not prepared to sing
at the funeral of democracy,
not ready to recite the ode
that hails her tragic death.

I will not open the door
to the reign of hate and cruelty,
will not welcome the travelers
who enter with bared teeth.

Circle ’round, and let’s tell stories
of the world we hope to see.
Let’s sing songs, and weave spells
of a hopeful future.

Take a breath.
Take a breath.
Take a breath.

Gratitude List:
1. The morning’s cocoon of a moon
2. Golden time in the woods with joyful children
3. Shifting. Perhaps tomorrow morning I’ll feel differently, but right now, I feel a shifting that feels hopeful
4. Carpet otters
5. Stones that speak
May we walk in Beauty!

“Tyrants fear the poet.” —Amanda Gorman

“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” ―Brian Jacques

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the Earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.” ―Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

“Love is the bridge between you and everything.” ―Rumi

“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.”
―Bob Dylan

Beginnings and Endings

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

It’s November! Time for a Poem a Day! I am following Robert Lee Brewer’s Prompts over at The Writer’s Digest. Today, he suggests a Beginnings/Endings poem (or one or the other). The art is a collaboration between me and the Wombo Dream AI.

Another Month to Feed
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Perhaps it’s always rabbits
at the mouth of the month
because beginnings come
so often timidly, twitching noses
in the shadows, marking a small
moment in the never-ending
spiral of time, one birth in
an incandescent infinity
of new beginnings, yet
another meal for the wolf
of the month to come.

Gratitude List:
1. Poetry prompts
2. The two children who held my hands in the woods yesterday.
3. Social/emotional learning and teaching
4. Finding fresh purpose
5. Miracles
May we walk, oh so tenderly, in Beauty!

“I am passionate about everything in my life, first and foremost, passionate about ideas. And that’s a dangerous person to be in this society, not just because I’m a woman, but because it’s such a fundamentally anti-intellectual, anti-critical thinking society.” —bell hooks

“Bless the light and the darkness, the love and the fear.” —Rabbi Olivier BenHaim

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.” —Roald Dahl, The Witches

“For women who are tied to the moon, love alone is not enough. We insist each day wrap its knuckles through our heart strings and pull. The lows, the joy, the poetry. We dance at the edge of a cliff. You have fallen off. So it goes. You will climb up again.” —Anais Nin

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In the morning I went out to pick dandelions and was drawn to the Echinacea patch where I found a honeybee clinging to one of the pink flowers. She seemed in distress, confused and weak. She kept falling off the flower and then catching herself in midair and flying dizzily back. She kept trying to get back to work, to collect her pollen and nectar to take home to the hive to make honey but she was getting weaker and weaker and then she fell into my hand. I knew she would never make it back to her hive. For the next half hour she rested in my palm, her life slowly ebbing away as a thunderstorm started to brew. I sat on the earth waiting for death with her. The lightning flashed over the mountains, a family of turkeys slowly walked the ridge, a wild dog keyed into what was happening circled past us. The trees appeared startlingly vivid and conscious as the wind blew up and the thunder cracked and then her death was finished. She was gone forever. But in her going she taught me to take every moment as my last flower, do what I could and make something sweet of it.” —Layne Redmond

“Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.” —Thomas Merton

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.” —Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein

Audre Lorde:
“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.
.
Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
.
As they become known and accepted to ourselves, our feelings, and the honest exploration of them, become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas, the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have once found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but the true meaning of “it feels right to me.” We can train ourselves to respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.”

“Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.” —Khalil Gibran

Justice

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments

Since I began this project of creating a tarot deck cooperatively with an online AI generator, the AI itself has evolved so rapidly, and the creators of the generator itself have added so many new features that within the six months since I began, the initial artwork is beginning to feel clunky and old-fashioned. I realize that the work I did to create it was a helpful process, not only in terms of my ideas about the the inner journey and about the tarot, but also in terms of my sense of the artistic and poetic process of cooperating with an AI. I find myself wanting to begin again. Maybe this process will never have an end product, but will simply be a part of my own inner growth. Perhaps I will end up instead creating an oracle deck with the characters that inhabit my own inner meditations: The Psychopomp, the Witch, The Dreamer-Mother, the Two Elves, The Gnomes of Beautiful Vision and Music, The Companion, The Golden One, Death, The Bees, Eagle, Six Crows, The Dancing Fox, Running Deer, The Golden-Crowned Tree, The Lady of the Labyrinth, The Darkness. . . Or perhaps, even, they will merge in some inexplicable way.

So here, halfway through the Major Arcana of the Tarot, I will finish this series for now, with Justice.

What does Justice mean to you? Is it the blind goddess holding her scales and a sword? I find it really interesting that Cupid and Justice are both portrayed in blindfolds: Love and Justice–an odd cosmic balance there.

Is Justice a balance of vengeance? Eye for eye? You hurt me, so I get to extract my pound of flesh from your stony heart.

Is it about karma? The bad stuff we do will come back to haunt us, so we can all relax, knowing that our enemies will eventually get their cosmic comeuppance? I know karma is a lot more complicated and nuanced than that, but I think we sometimes reduce it to this little dance of joy over cosmic rebalancing, celebrating the downfall of the evil-doer.

I want the people who hurt people to be held accountable. I want the ones who are injured and harmed to be seen and heard and listened to, to receive apology or remuneration or recompense for their injury. I don’t need an eye for an eye, but I need the harm to stop. I need the tools of the narrative to be wrested from the hands of the ones who do the injury and handed to the ones who were injured.

Restorative Justice has become a bit of a catchword in institutions these days, especially church-based institutions. When understood and practiced with depth and skill, it’s a wonderful tool for healing and returning to balance, offering a circle of story-telling, where the injured party can speak of their pain and suffering, and the ones who caused harm listen, and take account of what they have done to cause harm. In the process, they, too, get to speak, to tell their own pieces of the experience. We enter restorative justice circles with a recognition that harm has been done, and that healing is possible, but only if we meet ourselves and each other at deep, deep levels of accountability can we hope to repair the breaches in relationships.

Saying that you practice restorative justice, but doing the work half-heartedly or simply to score social points only causes more harm in the long run. Institutions, clubs, churches, and organizations that claim to do restorative justice work but only implement the process when the most powerful members of the group want to exercise controls over less powerful members of the group is an abuse of power and is the antithesis of restorative justice.

The Justice card holds us to keep high moral and ethical codes that include ourselves as well as others. We hold ourselves to the standards we demand of others. We offer others the grace and mercy we would show ourselves. Sounds a little like the Golden Rule.

Tomorrow is November. I am hoping to do a poem a day for the month.

Gratitude List:
1. My compassionate and tender-hearted and fun-loving colleagues. They made Halloween so special and magical and fun for the kids (while also managing to keep things educational).
2. The turning of the wheel. We step into a new season. We can change, metamorphose, transform.
3. Presence. Accompaniment. Companionship.
4. Cats
5. Golden, golden, golden: light and leaves and hearts.
May we walk ever in Beauty!

The wheel turns.
The harvest is in.
The veil parts.
We walk into the dark time.
Dream well.
Bright Blessings.
—Beth WK

“The moon has awoken with the sleep of the sun, the light has been broken; the spell has begun.” —Midgard Morningstar

“A labyrinth is a symbolic journey . . . but it is a map we can really walk on, blurring the difference between map and world.” —Rebecca Solnit

“Turn inward: If you’re asking ‘why’, also ask why ‘why’? If your power is to question, also question the questioner in you.” —Shunya

“Everybody is trying to make their journey till death comfortable. In the process they are missing the moments that can open the door to immortality.” —Shunya

“Walk through the veil of the season.
Carry your own little light into the dark time.
Celebrate the inward spiral.” —Beth WK

The Wheel Turns

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

“Fortune, good night; smile once more, turn thy wheel.” –King Lear (2.2.169).

How is your fate determined? Are you destined to live a life decided by the vagaries of fate? Or are you, as William Ernest Henley declares in “Invictus,” the master of your fate? The Greeks wrestled mightily with the question in their ancient plays and poems. Do I bring my fate upon me by trying to avoid the fate the gods have ordained and the oracles have declared? Over and over again, humans in the ancient Greek tales, are playthings of the gods, unable to escape their fate, caught more inextricably within Fortune’s Wheel the more they try to escape.

The ancient Greek goddess Tyche (Fortuna to the Romans) was said to spin her Wheel capriciously, setting peasants and paupers in powerful positions, and kings and saints in the mud and the dust. The Wheel is the symbol of that which we cannot control: the accidents and diseases, the privilege we are born with or without, the world events that set the stage for the eras into which we are born.

And yet, this card reminds us, we are never without choices. We may not be able to control the Wheel’s turning, but we control our own responses. We make choices that affect the patterns of our lives within the larger framework of the fate that happens to us. Some people come to the tarot as they come to an oracle: Tell me what is going to happen to me so I can prepare myself for my fate. A healthier approach, and the one suggested by this card, is to use the cards to better understand ourselves so that we can respond in a wise and grounded manner when we seem to be wrenched out of our even keel by changes beyond our control.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Cassius, trying to convince Brutus to help him assassinate Caesar, tells him, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” And later, when the brutal deed is done, and Cassius begins to doubt that they can win the coming battle, Brutus acknowledges the role of fate in their destiny–“There is a tide in the affairs of men”–but urges Cassius again to action, to take that tide at the flood, which will lead them to their fortune, cautioning him that to refuse to take such a tide will lead them to ruin.

Sometimes, the Fool learns in the tarot journey, the wisest path is to be ready for the tide, like a surfer awaiting the perfect wave, to grab fortune as it approaches, and let it carry you to greater heights. And sometimes, it is helpful to sort out your story by remembering that not everything that happens to you is by choice, that you did the best you could with what you had. And mostly, it helps to know yourself well, so you can be equipped to make choices and to respond in healthy ways.

The Wheel of Fortune is one of the central motifs of Shakespeare’s great (greatest, in my opinion) play, The Tragedy of King Lear. As a teenager reading the play, I fell in love with the Fool, perhaps the play’s wisest character. Lear’s Fool seems to disappear out of the play, perhaps to surface in the tarot cards to gently advise us, as he did King Lear: “Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill,/lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great/one that goes upward, let him draw thee after” (2.4.71-73).

Gratitude List:
1. Cautiously good news on the cancer front for two of my best beloveds
2. The angels
3. The little screech owl who is calling in the dusk
4. These golden, perfect days
5. The ability to choose how to respond
May we walk in Grace and Beauty!

“Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book;
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
—Walt Whitman

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.” ―Arundhati Roy

“Be like a headland: the waves beat against it continuously, but it stands fast and around it the boiling water dies down. “It’s my rotten luck that this has happened to me.” On the contrary, “It’s my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I still feel no distress, since I’m unbruised by the present and unconcerned about the future.” What happened could have happened to anyone, but not everyone could have carried on without letting it distress him. So why regard the incident as a piece of bad luck rather than seeing your avoidance of distress as a piece of good luck?” —Marcus Aurelius

Inviting Your Enemies

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment

I’m not Catholic, but I pray the rosary. I had been intending to learn the prayers and explore the process (very intellectualized, I know), and then my father got very sick. On the weekend that he was receiving a risky treatment simply to try to save his life, I picked up the rosary and my little booklet into which I had scribbled my versions of the rosary prayers, and I learned. In desperation and need of grounding and comfort, I began to say the Aves and the Love Prayer (the Our Father), holding desperately to the beads. When I had no words for the mix of terrible anxiety and holy presence I was feeling, I walked the path of the beads.

Perdita Finn and Clark Strand, in their book The Way of the Rose, speak about holding the beads as holding the hand of The Mother. Comfort and peace and tenderness upwelling in the midst of whatever life is bringing: crisis or joy, or the quotidian rhythms of the day.

Here is my version of the Our Father. It changes every once in a while, as praying it brings me new insights into what I mean when I say the words. I’ve gotten a little wordy on the sign-off, but that’s my own flourish. It feels right to me:

Oh Love, which imbues the cosmos, Holy is thy name.
May thy realm come. May thy will be done,
here on earth as it is in the heavens, and within the sacred circle.
Grant unto us this day what we need to survive,
and lead us ever into right relationship with you and with others and with the all.
Keep us from walking in paths of destruction, and deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Wisdom and the Vision and the Virtue,
the Promise and the Presence and the Peace,
the Glory and the Story and the Song,
both now and forever. Amen.

Lately, when I say the line, “Draw us ever closer into right relationship,” I see in my mind’s eye several of the people who have hurt me. Of course, I mean them when I pray that line–still, they intrude upon my peaceful prayers. Today, when it began to happen, I invited them in. I had also been thinking about how this is the day of the Archangels, the Feast of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. And so, instead of simply holding the idea of being drawn into right relationship with them, I asked the archangels to invite their angels to witness my prayers.

It feels really weird to write that, but it felt so right in the moment, and continues to feel right. My rosary prayers also became more lively, more awake, more focused. I felt safe (who doesn’t feel safe when surrounded by angels and Mother Mary?). It feels like the line in the Psalm: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” I’ll admit, when I got to “Keep us from walking the paths of destruction,” I found myself talking very directly to their angels, and “Deliver us from evil” has a new sort of ring when you say it in presence of the angels of people who have harmed you.

I don’t know whether there will ever be reconciliations and restorations on this plane. I’ve walked away from that door. I won’t wait around for that to happen, and making it happen will take a great deal of work on someone else’s part at this point. But I might continue to invite their angels to the table of my prayers.

Gratitude List:
1. Angels
2. Art
3. The rosary
4. Always something new to learn, some new way to deepen
5. Celebrating thirty-two years with my soul-mate. Such a good, good man.
May we be draw ever into right relationships.

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.” —Maya Angelou

“Sometimes it seems as though the Wildest One (you might call her God, or the Universe, or Love) is actively meddling in the affairs of mortals, like I am given a thing to learn, and then immediately after am handed the situations necessary for practice and integration.” —Beth Weaver-Kreider

“You don’t need to attend every argument you are invited to.” —anonymous (possibly Zig Ziglar

“It’s hard to be mad at someone who misses you while you’re asleep.” —Calvin, of Hobbes (Bill Watterson)

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings;and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any– lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
―e. e. cummings, read by Anne Marie at our wedding on this day in 1990

“To live a creative life,
we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
―Joseph Chilton Pearce

“If music be the food of love, play on.” ―William Shakespeare

“At the still point, there the dance is.” ―T.S. Eliot

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” ―Leonard Bernstein

“To speak about that location from which work emerges, I choose familiar politicized language, old codes, words like ‘struggle, marginality, resistance.’ I choose these words knowing that they are no longer popular or ‘cool’ – hold onto them and the political legacies they evoke and affirm, even as I work to change what they say, to give them renewed and different meaning.
I am located in the margin. I make a definite distinction between that marginality which is imposed by oppressive structures and that marginality one chooses as site of resistance – as location of radical openness and possibility. This site of resistance is continually formed in that segregated culture of opposition that is our critical response to domination. We come to this space through suffering and pain, through struggle. We know struggle to be that which pleasures, delights, and fulfills desire. We are transformed, individually, collectively, as we make radical creative space which affirms and sustains our subjectivity, which gives us a new location from which to articulate our sense of the world.”
From the essay: ‘Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness;’ From the Book: “Yearnings: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics” (1989 ) by bell hooks

Grabbing the Throat

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / Leave a comment
My apologies for the unsettling photo, but I’m using it to help me exorcise a dream.

In the dream, I and three friends are moving our things into a room where we’ll be staying. Our beds are laid out in a rectangular pattern, so there’s sort of a room within a room. Suddenly we realize that there are snakes under our beds: several really large and a couple small ones. Their bellies are creamy yellow, and their backs fade back and forth between blue and green, with some patches of orange in the lines between belly and back.

We leave the room and someone comes to get the snakes out. I remember in the dream telling myself (and this might be my conscious mind intruding) that snakes actually represent all sorts of good things and there’s no reason to be afraid of them, but I was. I was terrified. (And snakes ARE a powerful symbol, holding many different ideas. And even though I like snakes, I can’t ignore the startle factor.)

When we get back to the room, we check for the snakes, and they seem to be gone, but when I go to lift my stuff, the largest one rears out, fangs beared, and lunges for my throat. I manage to put up my hand to grab its throat, and then the image freezes.

Just before I woke up, the image was frozen for what seemed like seconds, with the snake lunging with immense fangs toward my throat, and me grabbing it by its throat.

The Dream-Mother speaks:
Who gets to tell your narrative? If you don’t actively cultivate your story, speak your truth, interpret for yourself the life you have been living, others may begin to control that narrative. There is danger in letting others control your story. It make take some active and powerful work to keep your own throat safe so you can interpret your story.

You cannot control how others see your story, but you need to take great care that you don’t let others’ interpret your story in such a way that you begin to believe their version.

Also, acknowledge your fears. Simply telling yourself and others that you aren’t afraid of snakes does not make it so.

Gratitude List:
1. My supportive colleagues. I’ve landed into a tender community.
2. Speaking my truth. Interpreting my own story instead of letting others tell me how it should be interpreted.
3. Cool fall weather.
4. All I am learning as I learn to pray the rosary.
5. How the world is alive. How everything speaks. Everything listens.
May we walk in Beauty!

“Self care is not an individual act; it is a collective act.” —Yara Sallam

“The enemy of a love is never outside, it’s not a man or a woman, it’s what we lack in ourselves.” —Anaïs Nin
***””
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” —Frederick Buechner

“To live by a large river is to be kept in the heart of things. ” —John Haines

I haven’t yet read The Shack, but this passage makes me think I oughta:
“I,” she [the Holy Spirit] opened her hands to include Jesus and Papa, “I am a verb. I am that I am. I will be who I will be. I am a verb! I am alive, dynamic, ever active and moving. I am a being verb. And as my very essence is a verb, I am more attuned to verbs than nouns. Verbs such as confessing, repenting, living, loving, responding, growing, reaping, changing, sowing, running, dancing, singing, and on and on. Humans, on the other hand, have a knack for taking a verb that is alive and full of grace and turning it into a dead noun or principle that reeks of rules. Nouns exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless ‘I am’ there are no verbs and verbs are what makes the universe alive.” —Wm Paul Young, The Shack
****”
Thomas Merton:
“There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist. . .most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his (or her) work. . . . It destroys the fruitfulness of his (or her). . .work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

“I can’t control the world, but I can control myself. And you are not going to coerce me into hating.” —Ruby Sales

“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.” —Mark Strand

“A characteristic of feminism is to think twice about what you know.” —Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ―Iain Thomas (not Vonnegut, as everyone says)

Hermit

/ Beth Weaver-Kreider / 2 Comments
The Hermit, from The Brightwing Tarot by Beth Weaver-Kreider and AI.

If you’re just joining me in these recent posts, I am taking a trip through the Fool’s Quest, the soulpath laid out in the stages of the Major Arcana of the tarot cards. I have been using the tarot as a tool for deep inner understanding and spiritual growth and development since 1992, and I thought it was time to do a public exploration of some of the ways in which this tool has helped me to learn more about myself and my connection to others and to the Holy One.

The way out is the way in.

Recently, I have begun praying the rosary. I’m in the middle of a 54-day novena, praying along with a group of others for our heart’s desire. I’ve been praying that I may live wildly and freely, unbound by others’ expectations and boxes. I can feel this prayer working and growing within me every day. The saint that we’ve been focusing on during this novena is St. Thecla, who listened to the apostle Paul and herself became an evangelist. Her story is told in the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla. Thecla was captivated by Paul’s preaching, particularly with his ideas of celibacy, which seemed to offer her freedom from an arranged marriage and the Roman ideas of respectability proscribed to young women of her day. Instead of being caged within her proscribed gender role, Thecla became a wandering preacher, wearing men’s clothes, and living on her own terms.

I’ve been thinking about St. Thecla quite a bit lately as I have been considering the tarot. The eighth card in the Major Arcana is Strength, which traditionally features a young woman closing the mouth of a lion. In St. Thecla’s story, when she refused the advances of a prince of the city, she was thrown to the lions, but they would not harm her, and one female lion actually protected her from the others. Thecla, like Strength, is portrayed in the company of lions, not dominating them, but quietly present with them.

Later in her life, having survived several attempts by powerful people to have her put to death, she withdrew from human society and lived in a desert cave, as many of the church’s early mothers and fathers did, where she ministered to people who came to visit her, and performed many miracles of healing.

So today’s Tarot character, the Hermit, is also reminiscent of St. Thecla. The Hermit withdraws from the hustle and bustle of society in order to focus and think, to pray and contemplate, to do inner work.

The way out, they say, is the way in.

The Hermit is a special kind of activist, an inner activist, who anchors and focuses the work that must be done through prayer, contemplation, generating healing energy, developing wisdom–not hoarding it. The Fool comes to the Hermit in the wilderness to learn to anchor and channel energy, to balance outward movement with inward contemplation. The Hermit is always portrayed carrying the light of their own inner wisdom in the wilderness. The Fool comes to the Hermit and learns to find the fount of Wisdom within.

One of the lessons I still carry from my college days was one a group of our professors worked hard to help us explore: that the work of the activist to create social justice must be balanced with inner work. Contemplation feeds action. Action enriches contemplation.

If you’re a Hermit, don’t give into feelings of shame that you aren’t doing more active work in the world. Do the work you’re called to do. Anchor energies. Pray. Find wisdom. Welcome the seekers. Be a refreshing fountain where your beloveds who are at the front lines of activism may come and receive your healing calm and wisdom.

Gratitude List:
1. Hummingbird
2. Holiness everywhere. In the Aenid of Virgil is the phrase: Incessu patuit dea. The Goddess is revealed as she passes. Everywhere you turn, She is there.
3. Wide and welcoming tables, and the people who work to create them.
4. My colleagues are so incredibly supportive and welcoming.
5. Cats
May we walk in Beauty!

“What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours—that is what you must be able to attain.”
―Rainer Maria Rilke

“Hope is a renewable option:
If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.” ―Barbara Kingsolver

“There is a voice that doesn’t use words.
Listen.”
―Rumi

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
―Carl Jung

“I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.”
―Mary Oliver

“We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and light.”
―Hafiz

“Our space was a home because we loved each other in it.” —Barbara Ehrenreich

“A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness.” —Barbara Ehrenreich

“There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.” —Barbara Ehrenreich